


The skin I'm living in

by ellen_shame



Category: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician)
Genre: F/M, Hoodoo, Poorly negotiated BDSM, Selkies, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2020-10-13 08:30:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20579534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_shame/pseuds/ellen_shame
Summary: ~ ~ Please pay attention to updated tags and warnings!!! ~ ~"You are caught between the human realm and the selkie realm. You will not be able to confess your love to anyone: neither a human nor a selkie; neither to them alone, nor through another; neither in the tongue of your human family, nor that of your selkie clan. If you do, you will lose your voice."A romance of myth and legend, playing out through Instagram posts, solicitors’ meetings, tour schedules, and cocktail bars.





	1. Part One, Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Kit, for helping me to conceive of this madcap idea in the first place;
> 
> to Liz, for all the late-night brainstorming sessions;
> 
> and especially to Dana, for editing and endless cheer-leading.
> 
>   
Title from April Brave by Loah, a.k.a. Sallay-Matu Garnett:
> 
> Longing for your skin,  
longing from the skin I'm living in.  
My surface tension building -  
spill me like that DMT.  
Call it what you will,  
Call it what it is,  
Don’t call it...
> 
> -Tags will be updated as the fic progresses. Please keep an eye out for new ones.-

Jon is nearly four and the evening is getting cold. His mum and dad are walking slower behind him, holding hands. There were loads of people at the beach earlier, making the most of the day off work and dry weather in March, but now it’s only them. His dad is carrying his coat; Jon had refused to put it on, which he’s starting to regret now. Holly trots ahead into the dusk, tracing the line where the surf meets the sand. Her nose is down, insistently following some interesting smell. The wind sounds like someone far away singing or wailing, the remnants of last night's unseasonable storm. 

There’s a lump a little way off down the beach, Jon notices. He picks his way over to it. The sand pushes up around his feet and makes walking tricky business. Holly has noticed the lump too and bounds over to it. She barks. Runs back to Jon and then returns to the lump.

It’s a baby.

“Mum!” Jon screams. “Mammy!”

His parents come running. The baby is lying on the damp sand, damp and sandy himself, naked, his skin developing a grey-ish tinge.

Mum scoops him and presses him against her chest, moaning, “Oh my God, oh Christ” over and over again as Dad puts his fingers against the baby’s neck saying, “Raine, let me touch him, is he still alive, move your hand, is he still breathing?”

The baby wails. The sound is surprisingly loud.

They all freeze. Jon looks at his parents look at each other. Then his dad remembers Jon’s coat that he's holding, and he and Mum scramble to get the baby into it, zipping it up around him and pulling it down over his legs.

Then lots of things happen quickly. They rush back to the house and get in the car and drive to the hospital. There are lots of doctors and nurses, and Mum and Dad go somewhere else with some of them and the baby, while Jon sits on a swivel chair in the receptionist’s office and swivels round and round and round. Eventually Mum and Dad and the baby come back and they take Jon into another room and talk to some guards and more doctors and some other people who arrived in a car. The whole time the baby stays quiet in Mum’s arms, looking at Jon with big eyes that shine green and brown like seaweed drying, still wearing his coat.

-

It turns out that keeping a baby you found at the beach is a lot more complicated than keeping a baby you got the normal way.

The baby comes home with them from the hospital. Everybody seems very surprised at how fine he is after who-knows-how-long lying in the surf. Jon assumes that this means the baby just lives with them now, but apparently not. People are in and out of the house all the time, people from newspapers, people from the hospital, but mostly people called social workers, whose job, as far as Jon can tell, is deciding who gets to keep babies. Jon hears people talking about the baby on the radio and on the TV, and again and again they’re asking for the parents to come forward.

“But his old parents don’t want him,” Jon tries to explain to the grown-ups. “They _left_ him on the _beach_. You don’t _forget_ your _baby_. So why can’t we have him?” he tries to say.

Eventually, after days and days, everyone else seems to realise this too, and then there are more people at the house - lawyers - and Mum and Dad have to have a lot of talks with them and the social workers and sign lots of papers and then, eventually, Dad tells him that the baby is going to be his brother.

“Okay,” says Jon. This seems fine.

“We’re going to call him Andrew,” says Dad.

“Okay,” says Jon again, and looks at Andrew. He’s standing up, clinging onto the edge of the couch, and Jon realises that he’s not really a baby that much.

“We think he’s about two,” says Dad. “We’re going to say his birthday’s St. Patrick’s, when we found him.”

“Alright,” says Jon. “When’s he going to talk?”

Dad sighs. “We’re not sure,” he says, looking worried.

Andrew lets go of the couch, topples over and starts to wail, a remarkably strong and piercing sound.

“Probably soon,” Jon reassures his dad. “He’s very _loud_.”


	2. Part One, Chapter Two

Jon is nine and he is _furious_. He keeps telling his parents he isn’t tired and they keep making him go to bed at the same time as Andrew anyway. He stares at the dark ceiling, fuming. The moon is full tonight, and bright enough to shine through his curtains, making it impossible to sleep.

He hears Andy singing to himself in the next room, a flute-like warble. He does that sometimes as he’s falling asleep. Then he goes quiet.

Eventually his parents make their way to bed. Bathroom sounds, and then their door closing quietly. 

The house is silent. The moon seems to be getting brighter. He really, really isn’t tired. 

He’s considering switching on his bedside lamp and reading, wondering if it’s worth risking his mother’s wrath if he’s caught, when he hears - something. Some tiny creak, almost more like a vibration than an actual noise. He’s immediately hyper-aware.

It’s Andrew’s footsteps in the corridor, slow and hesitant. He’s walking the opposite way to the bathroom. Jon slides out of bed and tiptoes over to the door, presses his ear against it. He hears Andrew’s weight on the stairs.

He opens his bedroom door and peeks. Andrew is halfway down the steps already.

Secrets are valuable leverage. Andy has been blackmailing him over the tin of Quality Street for weeks. Jon follows him. 

When Andy gets downstairs, Holly wakes up and skitters over to him curiously. He strokes her head and gently pushes her back to her basket. But she’s caught sight of Jon at the top of the stairs, is waiting for him to come down and say hello to her too. Andy notices her staring at something, turns round, and flinches when he sees Jon.

“What are you doing?” Jon asks in a stage whisper, coming down.

Andy doesn’t say anything, just looks increasingly nervous.

“Why are you down here?”

“I - I want to go outside,” whispers Andy.

“_Why?_”

“I want to go to the beach.”

“Right now?” Jon demands, and Andy nods miserably.

“You’ll get locked out if you don’t take the keys with you,” Jon says, smug because he remembered that and Andy didn’t.

“I keep it open with a shoe,” Andy mumbles, and Jon stares.

“You’ve done this before?” He nods again.

“But why?”

Andy’s face twists. Jon has an awful feeling that he might start crying. “I dunno. I just...want to be in the sea sometimes. I just have to.”

“I’m coming with you,” Jon decides, both because he takes his responsibility as a big brother seriously, and because midnight beach trips sound _exciting_ and he’s annoyed he’s never thought of doing it himself.

“You can’t tell them,” Andy pleads. “You can’t, Jon, please.”

Jon has rarely seen his brother look so scared. “Okay, fine,” he agrees. “Put your jacket on.”

But Andy is already wedging the door open with a boot, slipping outside in his pyjamas and bare feet.

“Andrew, it’s freezing!” Jon whisper-shouts, and suddenly realises how much he sounds like Mum. But Andrew is already half-way down the drive. Jon rolls his eyes, shoves his feet into his runners, and follows him.

Andy is hurrying, almost running, down towards the beach, but his face is turned up to the moon. When Jon catches up he sees he’s grinning like a madman.

“Why are you so weird?” Jon hisses, which is something he’s said to Andy at least twice a week for as long as he can remember, usually not unaffectionately. 

“Come on, come on,” Andy replies, tugging his arm.

It’s cold, but the exhilaration stops him from really feeling it. When they get to the beach, Andrew sheds his pyjamas and sprints into the surf, so Jon shrugs and does the same. Andrew is in up to his neck already.

“Don’t go any further!” Jon orders him. “What if you drown?”

“I know how to swim,” Andrew huffs indignantly, and Jon must concede that this is true. It’s a bit of a sore spot that Andrew is a much better swimmer than Jon is. On land Andy is constantly tripping over and walking into things, but now he’s twisting about in the water with the easy grace of an otter or a seal, laughing.

The moon is bright enough that Jon can pick out the rocks on the beach, the aerials of the houses, the freckles on his brother’s back. His skin seems almost silvery, weirdly glossy. On instinct, Jon reaches out and grabs his shoulder.

He exclaims when he touches it. It’s smooth, and warm beneath the chill of the water, but totally unlike human skin. There’s an almost oily sheen to it, and it’s covered, Jon realises, in something like very short fur.

Andrew is looking at him, confused as to why he shouted. “Your skin!” is the only thing Jon can get out.

“What?” asks Andrew, running a hand self-consciously over his own arm.

“You’ve gone all...look!” He holds his own arm, pale and goose-pimpled, out next to Andy’s, silvery and smooth.

“Why hasn’t yours changed?” Andy asks.

Jon wonders, for a moment, if this is a symptom of some horrible illness that Andy has. “Mine doesn’t change. Andy, nobody else’s changes. I don’t think.” Andy is still staring at their arms. “So yours has done that before?” Jon asks.

“Whenever I come in the sea,” says Andy, voice wobbling just a tiny bit.

“But I’ve seen you in the sea! I’ve been in the sea with you loads of times! You looked normal!” Andy’s face twists again and it’s one of those moments when Jon really thinks about the eighteen months between them. “I mean, not ‘normal’ - like, how you usually are.”

“It only happens at night,” Andrew whispers.

“How does it turn back?”

“When I get dry.” He pauses. “I thought - I thought it was normal.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that. “Let’s go back. It’s freezing.”

They traipse out of the water, Jon shivering and hurrying, suddenly very aware of the cold, Andrew dragging his feet.

“I always think it’ll make me feel better. Coming to the sea,” he says quietly as they walk back to the house. “And it does for a bit and then - it doesn’t anymore.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that either, but he hugs Andy tightly before they go to sleep. His brother’s skin is almost dry now, and Jon can feel how it changes - that short, glossy fur seems to be thinner and looser now, as if it were a piece of very fine fabric wrapped around Andy. He can feel his brother’s warm human skin moving underneath it. Something trickles through the back of Jon’s mind, some half-known story about second skins and people that come out of the sea. And Jon’s been asking Andy _why are you so weird?_ for as long as he can remember.

The next morning they are both very tired and their parents sniff suspiciously at their briny hair. That day in school, Jon goes to the library and asks for a book on myths and legends.


	3. Part One, Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to Dana for all her help! <3

Jon marches into Andrew’s bedroom and drops a hard-back book on his bed.

“I’ve figured it out,” he announces. “You’re a selkie!”

Andrew looks up from his comic. “What,” he says.

“It makes sense! We found you on the beach! What if you weren’t left there - what if you came out of the sea?”

“But are selkies real?” Andrew asks, with big eyes.

Jon shrugs. “Well, they must be, if you are one. Right, listen: selkies have a human skin and a seal skin. The human skin on land and the seal skin in the water. Like you! And,” Jon concludes triumphantly, “they sing! They sing to each other underwater to communicate, and they sing to humans to enchant them.”

Andrew looks alarmed. “I don’t want to enchant people,” he says.

Jon flaps his hands dismissively. “I think you do anyway. Everyone always goes nuts when you sing. It’s why Mum and Dad keep making you do it at parties.” Andrew screws up his face at the thought.

“_So_,” Jon continues, “we need to test it. We need to go back down to the sea and try to find your selkie family. They go around in big groups called clans, look, I’ll show you...” He grabs the book of myths again and flips feverishly to the selkie page. “‘Even when living on land, the selkie will retain a close bond to their clan. Selkies can be heard late at night singing mor- _mournfully_ to their clan of their longing to return to the ocean.’” Jon makes a face. He maybe could have chosen a better bit to read. “Anyway. They live all around Ireland and Scotland, it says so here. Let’s go tonight!”

Andrew closes the comic slowly and chews his lip. “Maybe we shouldn’t,” he says.

“What? Why not?”

“Maybe it’s a bad idea. Like you said last time. We might get locked out of the house. We might drown in the sea.”

Jon stares at him. “But don’t you want to see your selkie family?” he demands. 

Andrew says nothing. He stares at his lap.

“_Don’t_ you?”

“Maybe they don’t want to see me,” he mumbles.

“What?” 

Andrew shrugs. “I thought some people left me there. Maybe some selkies left me there. Same thing.”

Jon gapes. “No! It’s not like that! They all love their clan, the book says so -” He reaches to open it again.

“They left me on my own, though,” Andrew says quietly.

Jon thinks back to the day they found him. His memory of it is hazy at best, but one clear image has stuck in his head: his brother curled up in the surf, skin developing an awful grey tinge. Looking back on it with the benefit of six more years, he realises something he didn’t at the time: his brother came very, very close to dying. Jon feels claws gripping his stomach sometimes when he thinks what might have happened if they hadn’t stayed out for a late walk, when he thinks of the evening getting cold, the wind, the rain-clouds on the horizon...

“Andrew,” he says slowly, “there was a storm that day. Early that morning, a really bad storm. I remember because it woke us all up and Dad said it was a shame that people wouldn’t be able to go out and do things on the day off, but then it got dry again in the afternoon - anyway. There was a really bad storm out at sea - maybe you got, y’know, separated from them. Maybe they didn’t leave you, maybe they lost you.”

Andrew stares up at him. “I didn’t know about the storm. Nobody ever told me about the storm before.”

Jon shrugs. “I never thought it was important before. But think about it, you were, you know, tiny. Like the age when humans can’t even walk properly. Maybe you couldn’t swim properly either, and you got washed up.”

Andrew looks at him, looks at him, looks at him. “Alright,” he says. “Let’s go tonight.”


	4. Part One, Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking such a looooong time to update this - this chapter really kicked my arse. Constructive criticism much appreciated.

They agree to stay awake until their parents have gone to bed, and then sneak out together. Jon instructs Andrew to wait in his room until Jon comes to get him, having deemed enough time to have passed for Mum and Dad to be sound asleep. Jon wriggles about in his bed in the dark for hours and hours, until finally it’s time to go.

When he gets into Andrew’s room, he sees his brother lying very still with his eyes open. They sneak out and Andrew is quiet, shoulders hunched, as they hurry down to the beach, with nothing of his wild excitement last time.

When they reach the surf Jon realises abruptly that he has absolutely no plan for what comes next. They stand staring at the waves together.

“You should - get in,” Jon tells him. “So your other skin can come on. I’ll come in too.”

They strip and make their way into the sea. It’s bitingly cold, but Andrew seems not to feel it. Jon watches, this time - watches how the glossy skin seems to form on his back as the water licks his skin.

“Now what?” Andrew whispers when they’re both chest-deep.

“Call them,” Jon says simply. “The book said selkies on land can still call to their clan.”

Andrew pauses. “H- hello?” he calls. “Can you hear me?”

The wind skims the waves. Otherwise the night is silent.

“Is anyone there?” he calls, a little louder. Nothing.

He turns to Jon, looking anxious.

“Put your head underwater, and then call,” Jon instructs him, trying to sound more confident than he feels. “They’ll be underwater, right? That’s where they’ll hear you.”

His brother takes a deep breath and sinks under the surface. Jon watches him glide forward, a swift, elegant movement that has always come naturally to him. He stays down there a while, and the water is shallow enough that Jon can just about make out his head turning from side to side. He knows his brother has his eyes open, peering through the dark water.

Eventually Andy calls. Jon can just about make out the muffled sound of it. A thick stream of bubbles rises to the surface from his mouth.

He remains underwater for a second, two, three, and then crashes back up to the surface, gasping for air and looking around eagerly. There’s nothing to see. Jon can’t meet his eye.

“Try again,” he insists instead.

Andy hesitates, not saying anything, but then ducks back under the water. The bubbles of his call seem pathetic in the quiet.

“It doesn’t work,” he mumbles when he comes up again. “Jon, I’ve been here loads of times, they would have seen me by now if-”

“No!” Jon insists. “This is how it works, all the myths said -” He inhales sharply. “Oh! You have to sing. Not talk to them in the human language. Sing to them!” 

Andrew shrugs helplessly. “What should I sing?”

“Just - just hum underwater,” Jon improvises. “You know how it sounds different in your head when you hum underwater? Just - just to get their attention, yeah?”

“Yeah…” Andy echoes, sounding unconvinced.

“Nice and loud,” Jon encourages him. “A nice tune. They’ll notice, you’ve a great voice, everyone says so. ‘Fierce set of lungs on that young one’,” he says, impersonating all the old people in their family, and Andrew giggles a little. 

“Alright,” he agrees.

He slides underwater a third time. Jon can just about make out his humming, a soft, folky melody. It grows louder, louder than Jon would have thought possible from under the water - louder, he realises, than _should_ be possible. It swells around him, seeming to warm the air, beautiful and hypnotic, but very, very sad.

Jon stops breathing.

Something twitches the surface of the sea about a dozen yards out. The soft waves seem to dimple and - then there are seals. Maybe two dozen of them. It seems like they didn’t approach so much as just appear. Their curious, dog-like heads peer out.

“Andrew!” Jon shrieks without meaning to.

His brother splashes back up to the surface and Jon points frantically to the seals. In the seconds it’s taken him to look to Andrew and back, an old woman has appeared among them. Her long hair is wiry grey streaked with white. The skin of her face and neck is criss-crossed with wrinkles, but her shoulders and back are silvery and glossy, like Andrew’s. She’s naked. She swims as if it’s as easy as walking. 

“Well,” she says, with a small smile. “There you are.” Her voice is hoarse but resonant.

“H-hello,” Andrew stutters. Jon knows he is absolutely terrified.

The old woman smiles. “Hello, little one. We’ve been hoping for a long time to see you.”

Andrew stares. “Are you - am I - I mean, are we…”

She’s very close now; only a few feet from Andrew, only a few yards from Jon. The seals are following at a distance.

“We are your clan,” she says softly.

“You’re selkies?” breathes Andrew. “I’m a selkie?”

“You didn’t know?”

He shakes his head in silence.

“Oh,” she murmurs. “We have so much to tell you. You must come and meet the others.”

“Are they - are my parents there?” he asks.

The other seals have been edging closer; now the old woman sends them away with a flick of her fingers, and pauses, grave eyes fixed on Andrew.

“Little one,” she says again, sighing it. “Your parents - you were separated from them in a storm when you were very young -”

“I know,” says Andrew eagerly. “My brother figured it out! So they want to see me again, don’t they? They didn’t leave me on purpose?”

She looks at him with an expression Jon can’t read. “I know they would love to see you again...I’m so sorry to tell you this when we’ve only just met again, little one, but your parents died in the storm that separated you from them.”

“Oh,” says Andrew. “Oh. Oh.” 

“But the rest of the clan are so desperate to meet you,” she says quickly. “You see, we are not like human families, the whole clan helps to bring up a pup - you can meet your mother’s brother - your cousins - and I am your grandmother’s sister, you know. You look very much like her. And like your uncle too.”

Andrew’s eyes widen. “Really? A whole clan of people who are like me?” he whispers, and wades deeper out towards the group.

Their parents’ warnings about talking to strangers ring in Jon’s head. “Who are you?” he calls out to the old woman, because he knows Andrew isn’t going to.

She looks at him for the first time, and her eyes narrow. “I am the matriarch of this clan and the governor of these waters. You should address me as ‘Your Highness’. Who are _you_?”

“I’m his brother,” says Jon, chin up.

She looks between them. “A human?” she demands.

“Yes,” Jon says, and Andrew nods.

“Hmm.” She looks over him and doesn’t appear particularly impressed. She turns back to Andy. “Come. Meet your clan.”

The seals have been slipping closer again without Jon noticing; now, as if at some sign of permission from the matriarch, they surround Andrew, drawing him further out into the sea. Andrew wades further and further, until he’s paddling and then swimming and then steadily treading water. The selkies dart closer and closer to him, until they’re sniffing him, weaving around him. The barks and yips turn into laughs and exclamations as, before Jon’s eyes, some of them follow the lady into human form. They change shape as easily and quickly as water pours out of a glass. Jon hangs back, staring between seal faces and human faces. Of the latter, he recognises Andrew’s long nose in one; the shape of his mouth in a second; his thick hair falling around another. 

One of them, a man, exclaims, “You must swim out with us! Come and see the rest of your territory.” The rest buzz with agreement.

Andrew looks out to the horizon, the endless moonlit sea. Jon notices that he’s breathing hard, his movements as he treads water becoming more strained. 

“I can’t,” Andrew says. “I can’t swim that far.” 

The enthusiasm of the clan seems to drain away; somehow Jon can read the expressions on seals’ faces as easily as the humans’. Andrew says, panting, “I need to go back. I’m sorry. It’s too deep for me to stand.”

The matriarch transforms again into her seal shape and pushes him gently back to the shallows and Jon as the clan look on. Jon sees how wistful he is gazing back out at the seals darting easily through the water.

“I can’t tell you how happy we are to see you again, little one,” the matriarch says to Andrew, once he’s standing. She reaches out of the water to cup his face. Unthinkingly Jon creeps closer to his brother. “It’s been such a very long time. Some of the clan thought we had lost you for good, but I always believed - I always felt - that you were somewhere safe among the humans.”

“I was,” says Andrew, wonder in his eyes. “I have been. My family found me on this beach right here.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Your family?”

“Jon found me,” says Andrew, gesturing back to him, and Jon swells with pride. “And then my parents adopted me.”

“Hmm,” says the lady. “That would explain your form.”

“My form?” Andrew repeats.

“This is not your natural form, of course. Selkies may take the form of humans, but this is not our true selves. You should…”

She melts into the other shape: a small, pointed head and a long body of glossy fur, smooth and quick in the water. After a moment she reforms herself.

Andrew grins. “Yes! I want to do that! How do I do that?”

She sighs. “You have complicated things, little one. It is very rare for a selkie to come into contact with humans when they are as young as you were. I have never known it to happen in all my life, and I’ve heard of it only a few times.” 

She pauses, looking serious, and Jon watches Andrew watching her anxiously.

“Well, listen. There are ancient laws governing the meetings of the selkie world with the human world. A fully-grown selkie may sometimes choose to give up their selkie form to live the rest of their life as a human. To do this, there is a ritual: the exchange of the selkie skin for human clothing. But you accepted human clothing without making that choice - without giving up your true skin at the same time. Well, I say ‘accepted’ - these humans -” she jabs her chin in Jon’s direction “- put their clothing on you when you were too young to know what they were doing. But my point is: you have both selkie skin and human skin, but neither belongs to you fully. And so, you belong fully to neither the selkie world nor the human world. Your selkie skin may appear in seawater and moonlight, and you have kept your selkie voice - you can sing to summon us underwater, and sing to enchant human hearts - but you cannot change into your true form.”

“I want to,” repeats Andrew. “What do I have to do? Give back my human clothes? I’ll do anything.”

“The only way you can transform fully again is if you reverse the ritual, and make the choice to live as a selkie rather than a human. But you will have to surrender your selkie form, in order to make the choice to take it back.”

“Okay,” he says instantly. “How do I do that?”

She strokes his face again. “I’m afraid it is not something that can be done as soon as you choose. Your selkie skin will surrender itself to the human world at the the first sign of love from a human.”

Andrew looks confused, and there’s a pause.

“Excuse me,” Jon calls, “but he’s already had a sign of love from a human. Our parents tell him they love him all the time.” He jerks his chin up and looks the matriarch in the eye. “So you must be wrong.”

The matriarch narrows her eyes at him.

“How old are you, human child?”

“Nine,” says Jon, feeling defensive.

Her expression softens. “Hmm. You are perhaps a little young to understand what I mean in this case by ‘love’. And you, little one…” She looks down at Andrew. “You are certainly too young. But perhaps in ten years or so…”

“Oh,” says Jon, suddenly getting it. “Oh.”

She looks back up at him. “You understand?”

He nods. “So when...someone says they love him, you know, like _that_...what? The other skin just disappears?

“The skin will surrender itself to the human world. But remember...there are many ways to express love, other than by saying it.”

Jon feels himself going pink, and nods.

She fixes Jon with a grave expression. "A selkie in the human world may act upon their love, but not utter -"

“_What?_” Andrew cuts in. He’s been looking back and forth between them wide-eyed as they talk, as if watching a tennis match. “What are you talking about? I don’t -”

“I’m afraid, little one, that you will not be able to speak those words until they have been spoken to you. The gift of the selkie song has always come at a price: you can sing to delight human’s hearts, but you must not tell them what you feel in your own. And since you are no longer fully of the selkie world either, the same price will apply to your own people: you can sing to us underwater, but you cannot voice your love for one of us.”

Andrew is staring, obviously uncomprehending, so the matriarch turns back to Jon to explain.

“Human child, you need to remember this for him. He will not be able to confess his love to anyone: neither to a human nor a selkie; neither to them alone, nor through another; neither in the tongue of his human family, nor that of his selkie clan.” She looks back at Andrew. “If you do, you will lose your voice. Do you understand, little one?

Andrew is silent for a moment. Then his chin dips and his forehead wrinkles, and Jon recognises the signs that he’s about to burst into tears. “No,” he says finally, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I don’t! I don’t understand anything! I just want to go _home_.”

He looks back and forth between them, and Jon isn’t sure where he means.

The matriarch swoops down and pulls him into an embrace, holding his face against her neck as he starts to sob. 

“I promise you can come back to us very soon, little one,” she says soothingly. “Even if you can’t swim far out with us, you can come back and meet us all properly. You can still sing to us underwater - you must tell us all about your life with the humans, and we will tell you about the clan. Come back tomorrow night, if you can. We’ll wait for you. You can come back every night, if you want to! Until the day when you can transform and come and join us in your true form. Does that sound nice?” He nods and sniffs, still clinging to her neck. She strokes his hair and kisses the top of his head.

“Take him back to your house,” she mutters to Jon over Andrew’s shoulder. “If he tries to sleep at sea with us he will drown.”


	5. Part Two, Chapter One

ELEVEN YEARS LATER

Andrew is eighteen and has been invited to a party at some Master’s students’ flat. He feels cooler than he has ever felt in his life but he also feels gut-twistingly nervous, because he was invited, specifically, by Sallay, who introduced herself at the open-mic thing on Thursday and told him his voice was “spectacular” and then kissed him as everyone was going home and then tossed out, “I’m having a party on Saturday, you should come if you want to” like it was nothing. He keeps wishing he hadn’t told her earlier in the evening that he was in first year.

The door opens and it’s a girl he has never seen before - one of the flatmates, he guesses.

“Hi,” he says, hovering on the doorstep. “I’m Andrew, I’m a friend of -”

Sallay walks past the door and trills “Andy!” and pulls him in and hugs him tight. She smells like something flowery. She introduces him to the flatmate, then takes him into the living room and introduces him to some more friends, and Andrew abruptly realises he has absolutely no interest in talking to any of these people.

More people are arriving and Sallay is running around playing hostess and Andy keeps having the same “So what are you studying?” chat with everyone. He tells them he met Sallay “at a gig” because he thinks it sounds better than “open-mic night”. It turns out kind of alright because forty minutes later Sallay rescues him from a girl who wants to tell him all about the debating society; Sallay grins and says she needs to borrow him as “a consultant curator for the playlist”. As he walks away from the debating society girl he feels like the coolest person in Dublin.

The rest of the party is great because they spend it ignoring everyone else with their heads together over the speakers, drinking the red wine Andrew spent way too long choosing in the supermarket and arguing about whether or not it’s bad form to have three Billie Holiday songs in a row on a playlist that is not a Billie Holiday album (no). If this is adulthood, he thinks, it’s pretty fucking good.

The party starts to wind down in the early hours and people are leaving. _I should go, I should say goodbye soon,_ he thinks, but Sallay keeps asking him questions and smiling at him and suggesting more songs to put on. When she goes to the bathroom Andrew realises there are only a handful of people left and, feeling brave with the wine, puts on The Clash, _Should I Stay or Should I Go?_ When she comes back he sees on her face the exact moment when she clocks the song. She smirks, just a little, and says in his ear, “Hang around for a bit?” then excuses herself from the few people remaining, hugging and kissing them all and apologising for bowing out early, saying she’s totally exhausted. 

She leaves the living room and he slinks out after her with a hurried wave and “bye” directed at nobody in particular. He doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes and he has no idea if they’ve figured out what’s going on. He desperately hopes nobody realises he’s following her, but also he wants everyone in the world to know.

Her bedroom, it turns out, is right next to the living room. He can hear the continued conversation through the wall, even after she closes the door.

They’re looking at each other. Her room feels so small. Her bedside lamp is already on; she doesn’t turn the main light on. 

“Can I -” he asks, and she takes the two steps over to him, wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him again.

He can taste the red wine and salt from the popcorn she was eating. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he’s aware that he has to bend down quite a lot, that she’s shorter in her bare feet than he realised, remembers that on Thursday she was wearing boots with high heels.

She pulls away and he notices that his hands are both on her waist. He lets go and she crosses the room to close the curtains across the window that looks down onto the street.

“Come here,” she murmurs, and he goes. She stands on her toes to kiss him again and something about that charms him, how small she is, how quickly she pops up two or three inches. 

She starts to unbutton his shirt. _Oh fuck, oh fuck, okay then,_ he thinks. She pulls the shirt off him and drops it. Her hands feel very warm through just his T-shirt. 

She’s wearing a short black dress with a zip at the back that goes all the way down to the top of her arse. He had noticed it earlier, had wondered in a hypothetical kind of way what it would be like to undo it.

It pulls down smoothly. He slides the sleeves off her shoulders and the whole thing falls to the floor, and suddenly she’s almost naked. Just pants. She’s not wearing a bra. The fact that she’s been not wearing a bra this whole time and he didn’t even know makes him want to die.

His breathing feels very loud. “Well,” she says, smiling, and puts her arms around him again. Her hands are running through his hair, stroking the side of his face, holding his shoulders. He thinks, very clearly and in words, _Nobody has ever touched me like this._ She pulls the T-shirt over his head and he hears it hit the carpet.

Something unfastens at the nape of his neck and slips off his body. The skin of his back suddenly feels cold and a little raw. He moves a shoulder experimentally. It feels lighter, unencumbered, and he knows, he just knows what it was - his other skin has come off.

Sallay pulls him towards the bed. He sees a crumpled silvery thing on the floor out of the corner of his eye as he lies down with her, and then he stops thinking.


	6. Part Two, Chapter Two

He wakes up slowly. The texture of the sheets against his back feels closer than usual, more noticeable, but not unpleasant. He shifts a little and his leg touches someone else’s leg.

He is instantly, totally awake. Two massive facts present themselves simultaneously: one, the skin; two, Sallay.

Sallay is curled up on her side towards him with her hands tucked neatly under her chin. She’s wrapped a scarf around her hair. Andy has absolutely no memory of her doing that. In fact he’s embarrassingly sure he passed out while she was in the bathroom and didn’t even ask if he could stay.

The grey light creeping around the edges of the edges of the curtains is enough to pick out her high cheekbones, her straight nose, her curling eyelashes. She’s so fucking pretty. Everything else aside, she’s such a pretty girl. 

Anyway. The skin. 

He gets out of the bed as quietly as possible. The room feels very cold outside the covers, especially across his back. He sits on the floor and picks up the skin to examine it. It’s strange feeling it when it’s dry. The texture is silky and fine, but tough. It’s hard to hold on to, like oil. When he holds it up he realises it’s shapeless, a rough oval with no arm holes or neck hole. He remembers the feeling of it falling from his shoulders, but he can’t see how it was attached. He’s not even sure which edge is the top.

He holds it around his neck and lets the length fall down his back, like a child making a cape out of a sheet. He can’t feel anything happening except the light slide of it against his skin. He pulls it tighter against his back, presses the edge of it into the nape of his neck where it came undone. Nothing happens.

Sallay has a full-length mirror on her wall and he catches sight of himself. He looks absurd, a gangly naked dude crouching on the floor just holding this thing against himself. He starts to panic. He never thought it wouldn’t just go back on.

He turns it the other way around and tucks it around his shoulders like a shawl, clutching it tight around him. Nothing. _Fuck, fuck_ -

“Wha’ you doing?” asks Sallay, her voice husky with sleep.

He drops the skin and tries to shove it under the bed.

“Nothing. I was looking for my - socks. My feet were cold,” he gabbles, hoping she’s not awake enough to notice the panic in his voice.

She hums and stretches slowly. The duvet slides down from her shoulders. “Warmer in here,” she tells him.

-

They get up properly later, sniggering to each other as he sneaks with exaggerated caution between rooms, making a game of hiding him from her flatmates, dissolving into giggles when one of them, desperately hungover, stumbles into the kitchen in her dressing gown while they’re making tea, stops dead staring at him and then goes, “Right, okay then,” and gropes her way to the fridge. He’s helping to clear up the glasses and bowls littering the living room when Sallay comes in, and he almost jumps about a foot in the air when he sees she’s holding the skin. 

“Did someone leave this here last night?” she asks the room in general, and the other flatmates shrug. 

“This isn’t yours, is it?” she asks him, and it occurs to him that he should have put it somewhere other than right next to the pile of his own clothes on the floor.

“No,” he replies, aware as he says it that he’s getting himself into trouble. “No, I’ve no idea.”

“Hmm,” she says, and strokes it. Andy feels a shiver run across the back of his neck. 

“Don’t get rid of it,” he says, fighting to keep an edge of panic out of his voice. “Someone might want it back.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t get rid of it. This is so nice. Someone must be missing it.” She strokes it again; the feel of it runs one way, like velvet. “I’ll put something on the event page for the party.”

He leaves when the living room is cleared up, conscious of out-staying his welcome. Sallay kisses him at the door, a proper kiss, her tongue in his mouth, not a _goodbye, random guy I had a one-night stand with _ kiss, and he’s half-way home on the bus before he remembers to be concerned about the situation.


	7. Part Two, Chapter Three

When he gets in his flatmates are mercifully not around, because he really can’t face “So where were you last night?” questions right now. He shuts himself in his room and calls Jon.

“Hi, are you free?” he demands as soon as Jon picks up.

“Yeah - you alright?” he says, and Andrew is aware he must sound like a nervous wreck.

“Ehm, kind of. Is - is anyone else around? It’s about the - the skin thing,” he explains in a lowered voice.

“No, it’s just me,” Jon tells him. “What’s happened?”

Andrew takes a deep breath. “So, ehm. It, ehm - it, like, fell off.”

“_What?_”

“Yeah. It - it just came off. All in one piece. I - I don’t know what to do?”

“How did it come off?” Jon demands.

Andrew’s brain goes blank. 

“Ehm, so - somebody - this, ehm, this girl sort of, like, brushed against my neck, and…” Oh, fuck it, it’s not like he wasn’t going to tell Jon at some point - “This girl took my shirt off and then the skin just kind of...came off too.”

There’s a delighted silence on the other end of the line. “Andy, did you get _laid_?”

“Maybe,” he says, and despite everything he can’t wrestle the shit-eating grin off his face. Jon starts cackling gleefully. 

“Shut up! Fuck off! I don’t even like you!” Andy groans as Jon coos, “Oh, my little baby brother,” at him.

Jon pulls himself together after a minute. “Okay, okay, business. So you can’t just - put it back on?”

“I tried,” Andy grimaces. “It didn’t work. It’s like - it’s not like a skin shape, anymore. It’s like a big shawl thing. It doesn’t stay on.”

“This is so _weird_,” says Jon, sounding fascinated. “Okay, I’m gonna look this up.” Andy can hear his keyboard clacking. “Bring it home and maybe Mum can - sew it, or something?”

“I, ehm - I left it there,” he says.

“With the girl?” Jon demands, and Andrew makes a reluctant affirmative sound.

“_What the fuck, Andrew _-” Jon begins in his big brother voice, and really too much has happened to Andrew in the last fourteen-ish hours for him to be putting up with Jon bollocking him now.

“I panicked,” he snaps. “She found it and she was like, ‘What is this, is this yours?’ and I couldn’t exactly be like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m a fucking _selkie_, sorry I didn’t mention that earlier,’ could I, so I said I hadn’t seen it before and now she thinks it’s a scarf that someone left at the party.”

“Oh my God,” says Jon faintly.

“She’s putting something about it on the Facebook page for the party,” Andrew adds miserably.

“You need to get it back,” Jon says.

“Yeah, I _know_,” Andrew replies. “I will. Next time I -” He pulls himself up, suddenly very conscious that Sallay had not actually mentioned seeing him again.

“So who’s this girl?” asks Jon, a bit gentler.

Andrew sighs. “Her name’s Sallay,” he says.


	8. Part Two, Chapter Four

That afternoon she posts on the Facebook group.

_Hi all! Thanks so much for coming last night. I think someone left this lovely scarf at the flat - any takers?_

She’s added a picture of it, a close-up of the fabric in her hand. The light of the photo makes it look sort of shimmery. He thinks about her picking it up, holding it, what she thought of the feel of it. It sends a thrill through his stomach. _Lovely_, she called it.

He checks the post obsessively. She gets lots of messages of thanks for hosting, but nobody mentions the scarf. The next day she writes another post, with the same picture attached:

_Last call! If nobody claims this gorgeous scarf I’m keeping it!!_

_Gorgeous,_ he thinks smugly. It’s been _almost_ twenty-four hours since he last saw her; he thinks he can message her now without it being clingy. He clicks on her chat window.

_Hi_, he types, and then hovers without pressing send. For a mad second he’s tempted to write _Thanks for taking my virginity_ just to get it out in the open. He suspects, actually, that she would find that funny rather than weird, but it’s not a risk he’s willing to take. After staring at the blinking cursor for almost three minutes, he sends _Are you around for a drink later?_


	9. Part Two, Chapter Five

For a few days she’s been thinking about bringing the topic up, discussing it, like you’re supposed to. But even now Andrew sometimes seems a little skittish, a little nervous, and she tells herself _not yet, give the poor boy a few weeks to find his feet, don’t overwhelm him, don’t freak him out._

And then, as has happened before, she does it anyway without thinking.

His hands were on her thighs, but he reached up to push his hair out of his eyes, and in the moment his wrists are up by his face she leans forward and pins them there. It’s instinctive.

He gasps, his eyes open wide, and for a terrible second she thinks he hates it. But he breathes out, almost a sigh, and keeps his hands perfectly still. He looks at her like - like she’s always wanted men to look at her. And God, it feels so perfect, so right, to have him beneath her and inside her and under her control, all hers to do with as she likes.

“Yeah?” she asks, breathless, aware that it’s slightly too late to be asking. He just nods.

He’s different, just slightly, once she’s holding his wrists, and she knows, she absolutely _knows_, that this comes as naturally to him as it does to her. He doesn’t move at all, lets her decide the pace. She goes slowly, to admire how he looks like this. And he’s quieter, doesn’t whisper to her or breathe her name like he usually does. He just makes wordless sounds, but when he comes he moans louder than she’s ever heard him. She keeps his wrists pressed into the mattress as his body spasms, and almost comes again as his hips buck into her.

Afterwards, she lies down beside him and watches him. He stays flat on his back, hands still up by his face.

She reaches out with a fingertip, strokes the shell of his ear. “You liked that, didn’t you?” she says gently. It doesn’t need to be specified what “that” is.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, staring straight up at the ceiling.

She hesitates for a moment. “Can I - Could I tie your wrists up, some time?” she asks.

“_Yes_,” he says, so quickly and so certainly that she knows he’s thought about it before. She grins. He turns to her, frowning, and doesn’t say anything.

“Great,” she says, keeping her voice light, and then he’s grinning too. He wriggles closer to her, kisses her shoulder, puts an arm around her.

“What about your ankles?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says again, just as fast, and she feels a thrill in her stomach. She threads her fingers through his hair.

“What about handcuffs?”

“Yeah.” He’s meeting her gaze now.

“Can I pull your hair?”

“Yes.”

“Can I put a blindfold on you?”

“You can do whatever you want to me,” he says, dreamy and terribly earnest, and she thinks, _Oh, I’m going to have to be careful with this one._

She leans forward to peck him on the mouth. “I think that’s enough to be going on with.”


	10. Part Two, Chapter Six

There are market-stalls all along the street, selling souvenir keyrings and fridge magnets and straw hats, and a few selling jewellery. He decides on impulse that he should buy Sal some jewellery, and wanders over to the nearest vendor. The guy gabbles a sales pitch at him in broken English, pointing out the biggest necklaces and earrings, and Andy smiles politely and ignores him, too used to shopping on a minimal budget. He looks over the smaller things. A ring is - way too much, he’s not going there. He doesn’t particularly like any of the pendants. She has about a million pairs of earrings already. There’s a tray of bracelets laid out, and one catches his eye - a delicate silver chain, very simple, except for the clasp, which is heart-shaped. Well. Maybe this little gesture will say something to her.

“This one, por favor,” he says to the vendor, picking it out. 

“Sterling silver,” the man says, showing him a little stamp on the back of the clasp which, Andrew supposes, is meant to prove it. “Hand-made. Very good.”

“Muchas gracias,” he mumbles, and hands over twenty euro. He wonders vaguely if he’s being ripped off. He’s never bought jewellery before.

Sal comes out of the restaurant a minute later. “Got something for you,” he says, with careful casualness, and tosses it at her.

She catches it with a cat’s reflexes, and when she examines it he hears her inhale.

“Oh,” she sighs, and looks up with that dazzling smile. “It’s lovely. I love it.”

She stands on her toes to peck him on the mouth and it turns into a longer kiss. She’s clutching the bracelet in a fist against his chest. He wraps his arms around her, holds her as tight as he dares on this busy street, and thinks, _God, I love you, I love you_.

When they pull apart she holds it out to him so he can put it on her left wrist. The clasp is fiddly and he’s not helped by the beer and sangria. Still, he gets it done, and then keeps hold of her arm, running his fingers along the grain of the chain next to her skin. He finds himself kissing the back of her hand like they’re in a period drama. She smiles at him as if she’d expected him to do exactly that.

_You were definitely some sort of queen in a past life_, he thinks. _Fuck knows what you’re doing with me._

The Spaniards keep late hours, which suits them both; it’s eleven by the time they're leaving the restaurant district. They walk back along the empty beach hand in hand, giggling with no reason, with joy at being alone together and on holiday, with the jug of sangria they’d shared over dinner.

The stars are bright and the ocean is still and quiet. They come to a halt wordlessly and look out at the horizon. Andrew stands behind her with his arms wrapped around her and his chin propped up on top of her head, relishing the view, the Mediterranean-smelling air, her hands over his.

After a minute she squirms around in his embrace and smiles wickedly.

“Let’s go skinny-dipping!” She’s off, running down to the sea, dropping T-shirt, shorts, and underwear as she goes.

He hesitates for a moment, but only so he can look at her perfect arse as she splashes into the waves, rather than out of any sense of primness. He follows her, yanking his own clothes off too, grinning. If she told him to walk naked through the streets of Dublin in winter he probably would.

The water is cold at this time of night, but he doesn’t mind. Maybe that’s the alcohol too - or maybe he’s just built for a cold sea, he supposes. 

He wades out to Sallay, who’s waiting for him, standing where the water laps tantalisingly around the top of her breasts.

“Hello,” she croons when he reaches her, and tilts her head back for a kiss. Her lips are sweet and sticky from the sangria and the brine.

He runs his hands all over her under the water. “Are you cold?” he asks against her mouth.

“No.”

“Liar,” he smirks, pinching her nipple, which is puckered tight. She yelps.

“How _dare you_,” she murmurs, and drapes her arms around his neck. He pulls her up against him so she can feel how hard he is. She’s almost weightless in the water, so he twirls her around and around, taking them further out. When the sea reaches her chin she bounces up to wrap her legs around his hips, and he moans, both hands under her thighs to keep her there, feeling her cunt spread against the underside of his dick.

He kisses her neck, her shoulder, that spot behind the corner of her jaw that makes her shiver. She sighs and gasps, still clinging to him, and he’s just starting to think about getting inside her like this when -

“Seals!” she exclaims.

“What?” 

She points over his shoulder.

They’re there. His clan. Directly behind him, maybe twenty yards further out to sea. Twenty-one pairs of bright eyes bob at the surface. He’s never lost a boner quicker.

He’s never quite been able to explain to them what clothes and nakedness mean to humans, and they clearly haven’t worked out that if two people are naked in the sea together then something _private_ is probably going on.

“Wow,” Sallay breathes, lets go of him and wobbles on her tiptoes in the water. “I’ve never seen seals so close. I didn’t even know there were seals around here.” She’s staring at them in childlike wonder, previous activities forgotten. And they stare back. Scales Glimmer, his cousin, a bubbly but gossipy girl a few years younger than Andrew, is edging closer, with an expression on her face that he recognises as friendly curiosity.

“Oh, _fuck_,” he mouths to himself. 

Sallay has turned away from him, edging, entranced, towards the seals, so he takes a breath and ducks his head under the water behind her. As soon as he does he hears a chorus of his name, excited because he hasn’t caught up with them in a few weeks. Before he can get a word in edgeways, the matriarch calls out to him, explaining that they felt him in these unfamiliar waters and decided they’d call by and see what had brought him to the Mediterranean.

“Is that your mate?” Dawn Surf, a friend of Scales Glimmer, chirps excitedly. “Is she a human? She doesn’t smell like a human.”

He watches Sallay’s figure anxiously through the water. It looks like she’s staying still, watching the seals, not turning around to see what he’s up to.

“What, yeah, of course she’s a human,” he stutters. “Look, ehm, it’s really nice to see you all, but can -”

“Is she your mate though?” Scales Glimmer demands. She’s only fifteen yards or so away from Sallay now. “She’s the one that you said has got your skin, right?”

“Ehm, yeah, she’s got my skin,” he says, but stumbles at the word _mate_. There’s no concept of _girlfriend_ in the selkie language. _Mate_ means so much more than that, means - _life partner_, even _wife_, more like. He’s been with Sallay ten months. He shakes off that thought and turns back to Scales Glimmer and Dawn Surf. “Listen, can you -”

He hears Sallay calling his human name above the water, feels that tugging weirdness of listening to English and the selkie language at the same time.

“Don’t - don’t be weird to her!” he hisses at Scales Glimmer. He loves his cousin, but she’s a fucking idiot, and he absolutely would not put it past her to cuddle up to Sallay and start barking in her face.

He raises his head and feels that shift between one world and another. He’s not sure how long he was talking under the water; it’s strangely hard to keep track of time in both worlds. 

“I was, I wanted to look at the seals under the water,” he stutters to Sallay, but he seems unconcerned.

“Look how close it’s coming!” she exclaims, delighted. She reaches out her hand to Scales Glimmer, cooing, as one might with a shy puppy.

“Sal, don’t, they might - have diseases,” he says, extremely grateful they can’t understand him. “They might bite. Come back a bit.” And thank God, Scales Glimmer seems to have stopped creeping closer.

Sallay swims back to him, still looking at Scales Glimmer over her shoulder, and smiling as wide as he’s ever seen. “I feel like a Disney princess,” she says dreamily.

“You’re my Little Mermaid,” he jokes, not thinking about what he’s saying, only glad there’s some distance between her and the clan.

“Kiss the girl,” Sallay croons in a Jamaican accent, and kisses him herself.

He kisses her back with his mouth closed, horribly aware that his clan is still watching them curiously.

“Anyway,” she purrs, pressing up against him. “We got distracted.” 

“Sal, I -” And he knows the clan don’t have the same understanding of nakedness as humans, but even so he tries to cover her ass with his hands. She misinterprets it, and arches her back so his fingertips are between her legs. She slides a palm down his stomach to his dick and tugs it languidly under the water.

He spins her around in the water so that her body is blocking the clan’s view of what she’s doing. He thinks he can still hear the murmur of their voices under the water. “No, I - let’s go back to the hotel,” he says, moving his hands to the safety of her waist and trying to push her back a little.

“Why? This is so lovely,” she says, leaning back into the water. He accidentally looks at her boobs, her nipples stiff and dark.

“The water’s too cold for me to do anything,” he lies, and is kind of surprised that she seems to believe him, because, despite everything, he’s getting hard again in her hand.

She kisses him again, gently, palms chastely cupping his face. “Let’s go back to the hotel,” she agrees. She turns and wades back to the shore.

“I’m just gonna, ehm, rinse out my hair,” he says nonsensically, and she laughs, “You’re such a water baby.”

He ducks underwater again. The whole clan is watching curiously, expectantly. 

“Look, ehm, we have to go, sorry, I can’t really talk to you when she’s there. I’ll see you again when I’m back in Wicklow.” He makes to swim inland.

“_Is she your mate though?_” Scales Glimmer yells at him one last time, and Dawn Surf chimes in, “She’s very pretty for a human! We’ll be nice to her! _Is_ she?”

_Ugh_, he groans to himself. “Yes!” he yells back, and walks out of the sea.


End file.
